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5 signs that can tell you when to hire your first employee

If your business is growing, sooner or later, the tasks needed to keep it heading in the right direction are going to mount up and it might be a struggle to stay on top of things. If this sounds familiar, could it be time to look at hiring your first employee?

Hiring your first employee can feel like a huge step - for a start, you’ll have to let someone else into your business. That means opening your working life, perhaps for the first time, to possible criticism. You’ll certainly have to let go of a little control and share what once was only yours. You could even feel a little insecure at the prospect of greater responsibility and additional costs.

So, how do you know if you’re ready? What are the signs?

In this post, we’re going to run through five key indicators that might suggest you need to hire an employee. After that, we’re also going to look at six tips to ease you into becoming an employer.

Ok, without any further ado, let’s get started:

5 signs you need to hire your first employee

1.
Turning down work

Turning down work once or twice may be fine, but what happens when this is a regular occurrence? It can be a sign your business is short of resource. If this is happening to you, it might be time to think about what more could be achieved with a little bit of extra help.

2.
Time pressure

If you just don’t have enough hours in the day to fulfill everything that’s essential to the growth of your business – that’s a problem.

It might be that you don’t have time to reply to all those sales enquires or client emails - and the more hours you work, the more tasks seem to pile up. Or, it might be that you never get time to leave your desk to seek out new opportunities or even visit your clients.

Letting someone help with basic tasks will free you up to spend more time on important stuff.

3.
Quality dip

Like other small business owners, your reputation depends on delivering a quality service; but when you become busy, do you find standards slip?

If mistakes are creeping in, if you don’t have the time to be as diligent as usual, or worse still, you’re receiving complaints and customers are frustrated, it might be time to think about hiring a second pair of hands.

4.
New opportunities

Financially, you may be buoyant – but do you have the flexibility to exploit new opportunities or explore new areas of making money?

If not, the moment might have arrived for you to delegate tasks and free up time to explore those opportunities that might otherwise be missed.

Here’s another thing to consider: might an opportunity lie outside your own expertise?

Hiring someone with different skills could make the most of an opening you might not be able to take advantage of on your own.

5.
Greater freedom

As a business owner, you wear many hats. You’re both a specialist and the person who does all the admin. And as your business grows, the number of hats can grow too.

If you find yourself increasingly moving away from what first encouraged you to strike out alone - and you need greater freedom to reconnect with what you love to do – well, that might be a good reason to consider bringing someone in to help.

By now you’re probably a little clearer on whether you need to take on your first employee. Bringing someone into your business will mean introducing changes and in the next section we’re going to guide you through a few steps that need to be taken once your decision to hire has been made.